Printed fabrics, including non-woven, woven, and knitted fabrics, are often printed with pigments to produce an attractive design or color pattern on the cloth. The pigment printing basically uses pigments, thickeners, and binders, while pad dyeing typically consists of pigments and binders. The pigment printed fabric must have acceptable fastness properties. These performance requirements are evaluated by tests such as the hand, crock, and wash fastness. It is also desirable for the pigment system to have good redispersibility.
The binder for pigment printing or pad dyeing which meet the performance requirements have, until recently, contained formaldehyde or formaldehyde containing or generating compounds for crosslinking with the substrates. Recent efforts have been made to reduce the formaldehyde content of, or the free formaldehyde generated by, the binders, or to totally eliminate the formaldehyde component of binders, for environmental reasons. An example of a low formaldehyde-emitting binder for cellulose is U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,198,492 and 5,278,222, which are related patents, issued to Dennis P. Stack. Stack teaches an aqueous dispersion of discrete particles of a highly functionalized emulsion copolymer formed by the copolymerization of a mixture 10 phm to 60 phm of one or more water-soluble polymerizable olefinically unsaturated non-ionic organic compounds and the balance of the mixture being a mixture of comonomers, including one or more water-soluble olefinically unsaturated organic compounds having at least one carboxylate group therein and one or more water-soluble olefinically unsaturated carboxylic acid hydroxy esters or olefinically unsaturated amides. The highly functionalized emulsion copolymer is a low solids composition which is used in conjunction with a latex polymer to constitute a binder for cellulose. That is, Stack teaches a two part latex composition which constitutes the binder.